Ebony's Fable

"Got it? This is how people recognise others. Title-less Kings and even Emperors exist, but I highly doubt you don't have one. From what I see, this Worldcore has multiple Kings with titles. The Barrier King, his wife, the Elves and here…but the rest of the peasants don't."

"Stillborne Sage – Frozen Momentum – Breaker of Will."

...

"Neatherfae, why do you have 2 Epithets already. Wait…NEATHERFAE, SAGE?! HORSECRAP!"

"You curse a lot. Can we get started with training already?"

"I'm not your damned whetstone brat."

Ebony was alarmed by Dusk. Their Domain started to tear at many places when the Spirit Possession Emperor spread his spirit falcon's wings.

Only the thin layer he cast over himself for augmentation remained steady but he could feel it being pecked at by a furious storm of Will.

"Lesson one, Mr Sage….if you're going to use augmentation, Intent is the way to go. Your budding Domain is flimsy. All it has is quantity. No substance."

A majority of Dusk's spells lost the Domain-Will buff as the Spirits manifesting throughout his Domain were eating at his Will and tearing away his control over this place. That significantly reduced the potency and strength of all his magic.

With a flex of his fist, the Spirit Possession Emperor was covered in a thick layer of Intent. A bestial Intent.

'He can use Will and Intent alike because of all the different Spirits he has under his control.' As of today, this Spirit Possession Emperor had to be the one with the most diverse skills and abilities, surpassing Ebony by a long shot.

Exactly what Ebony required from an opponent. "Your value has skyrocketed."

"I'm losing understanding. How did you kill the Ecstasy Lord?"

Ebony clapped his hands. His clap generated a roar, inescapable for the man too absorbed at his movements to dodge an area of effect sound spell.

"Neatherfae…if you do that again with all your essence, I'm gonna kill you." The Spirit Possession Emperor had practically teleported away.

"How did you teleport?"

"Oh please, I entered the Spirit Realm and exited somewhere else. True teleportation isn't so easy."

'Is crossing realms any easier. He went in and out in that instant.' Ebony didn't know what to say, "I'm losing understanding. The Ecstasy Lord has nothing on you if you can escape like that."

"Unbelievable. His famed skill, soul interaction. Any being with a soul that he connects to will receive a lashback to their soul if his soul is injured. I can't harm him, and he's basically free to attack our soul. His mind tricks are nothing to scoff at and I would lose control over most of my spirits." The Spirit Possession Emperor explained.

"Lashback? Didn't feel a thing, maybe his skill missed."

"…little whelp, if that's all you have. You're not a threat."

"Thanks in advance for your guidance."

Ebony knew how the Spirit Possession Emperor came to this conclusion. The Pseudo-Immitation Soul-Basillisk's Roar was an essence-based attack.

With his Spirits, and the Spirit Qi Whale, the Spirit Possession Emperor was actually highly resistant to essence attacks. Even if it works on the soul, his energy levels just make it so that Ebony's form of targeting the soul was effectively weakened. And if he had a higher essence, Ebony's attack might not even tickle the man.

Something that the Spirit Possession Emperor placed into immediate effect, as all his essence regeneration suddenly skyrocketed to defend himself from any sneak attack roars from now on.

The Spirit Possession Emperor's expression fell, and Ebony hopped a ride on Dusk when his Domain fully collapsed. "Let's take this further away." They both agreed with their mutual escape.

Did they really have to use the same training field as Veronica?

If Ebony didn't need his full focus and all his mental capabilities for the Spirit Possession Emperor, he was very interested in studying how a Divination mage fought.

"I have one more thing to show you." Ebony already tested that Sequester, Domain, a plum bomb, close combat, barrage of spells, army of apparitions spawning shades, a soul attack, with his aura transmission through eyes didn't work on the Spirit Possession Emperor.

Gravity was not able to affect a spirit body. At least, not this Emperor's spirit body or any of his Emperor-ranked Spirits. Neither was sound effective. Unless he used an exorbitant amount of Will, his mana couldn't even interact with the Spirits if they turned immaterial. He would need to specialise a form of Will for touching spirit bodies to lower its consumption.

Intent would be dozens of times more effective for this purpose.

"Might as well show me why you have 2 Epithets."

"All you have to do for that is to open your eyes and look at me." Ebony wasn't able to inject his simulations through eye contact for the Spirit Possession Emperor had avoided eye contact at all costs.

"You must think I'm a fool."

Training with Uncle Wu would have to be postponed, he had his hands and mind full with the Spirit Possession Emperor right now. He was the exact opponent Ebony needed.

Ignoring all else, his first step was refining the Will for his Domain. It would not do if it were as easy to rip apart his Will's control as the Spirit Possession Emperor states. Changes could be observed in real time for self self-augmentation domain but Dusk will not receive the change in a short period.

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Function was the first step, and the Spirit Possession Emperor went from shock to horrified when he was able to edit his Will on the spot without any external shenanigans. Once he was able to maintain his augmentation and completely block out the Spirit Possession Emperor's attempts at breaking his Will down, it was time to reduce the Will consumption of 220 Will per minute.

Mandates were like this as well. Anything could be done at a cost.

To speed up achieving an effect, he just tossed as much Will as he could with a single thought. With that thought solidified, the Will is stabilised and achieves the effect he wants. Then comes removing all the useless and wasteful usage of Will to optimise a certain mindset for a certain function.

"Hells…"

Thirty minutes of mental and physical beatings later, Ebony's self-augmentation Domain was unaffected by foreign interference for a measly cost of 5.2 Will per minute. 'This should be roughly equivalent to Xin's Intent but my consumption is higher.' He achieved the effect of having Intent using Will. Not exactly the most efficient, but what works, works.

Now that his stats wouldn't rise and drop, he could hold his own against the Spirit Possession a little better.

The bane of formlessness was violence and instinct after all.

It didn't matter how flexible or predictive his martial arts was if his opponent used sheer reflex and instinct to react to any changes, and then the utmost intensity in aggression to power through defence, block off evasive routes. All the Shades and conjured arms aren't useful feints if the opponent simply ignores and takes the damage to trade blow for blow. It was the pattern his wife was leaning towards to handle his predictive and numerous feint-style martial arts.

With her foresight, his wife was a bit ahead with the predictive measures but the Spirit Possession Emperor's Fly Core Beasts were giving him unnatural reflexes. It might as well be foresight for him because the Emperor doesn't even look at any of the Shades and always manages to only react to his real body's attack.

His evasive feints are always seen through, and he was always hit once the Tiger Core Beasts possessing the Emperor decided to lunge for an attack. After he dipped into his other Core Beast's power more, his superior stats simply made it impossible for Ebony to dodge, since all his feints don't work.

If there was one thing, it was that the one that took damage was the Spirit Possession Emperor's snake scales and the tiger's manifested claws.

Ebony wasn't unharmed, but he didn't take any more damage than the reflected damage he did to his opponent.

Every instance they broke off from close quarters, they would heal and regenerate to tip top shape before they got further than a step away.

On the side, Dusk, who had been left alone,e had been struggling hard. At least, until Spine joined and then nothing the other summoned and manifested creatures did could get Dusk. With both sides not able to permanently hurt each other. The spirit beast army, Dusk and the Apparitions were in a stalemate. If his Apparitions got close to putting a beast down and sealing them, they would fade away into their spirit form or directly unsummon or escape back to the spirit realm. When his apparitions' body broke…they just took another. Dusk made sure that all of them were copied, and none would 'die' as they had backup copies of themselves.

Since they couldn't get into or break into Spine, Dusk and all the Apparitions' Will data was safe.

Spine was so thick with Will and mana that even Spirits couldn't get inside with their intangibility. It was their 'magic body' similar to any other living creature.

Although they did require Ebony's constant stream of mana feed, he actually hasn't sent them Will recharge. Dusk had managed so far with its stockpile. It did not have to waste any since they didn't have many ways of harming spirits without Ebony editing or strengthening their Will on the spot.

"Sage sounds about right now. How did you conform your Will so vastly different in less than an hour….that should take decades unless you've already experienced this."

"Decades? Don't trick me, this is a simple task of changing mindset." Experience, it might be due to the memory injection from the Ning Saintess, but he wasn't about to tell the Spirit Possession Emperor that.

"Hah! Maybe you can teach me something new too. Don't get tired now, I'm beginning to find this intriguing, I can do this all day."

"Perfect." Ebony found that he was liking this guy more and more.

"I'm going to kick things up a notch." Another flap of his large falcon wings brought forth a wave of even greater aura and an increase in augmentation.

Not only that, his army all turned corporeal with that shockwave of essence from the wing flap.

He buffed his entire summoned army.

'The Falcon might be more crucial to his powers than I imagined.' Ebony's Mana Discern couldn't get too much information when it came to this man as it was highly spirit-based, something he was unfamiliar with. Fortunately, the base energy was still a form of mana, and he wasn't completely blind to their abilities.

In the same way, his magic body was much too tough to immediately get injured when the man turned incorporeal to attack him. It was enough to make the Spirit Possession Emperor give up and just stay corporeal unless he was dodging or evading a spell.

The first proper Emperor Ebony had fought was more than he hoped for.

The two of them raised a finger and blocked a nostril, blowing out the blockage from the other nostril at the same time in the same fashion. He had clotted jelly-like black fluid, while his opponent had a gust of cold air and shards of ice.

They were both more capable of doing internal damage to each other than external.

"What is that spirit's powers?"

"Organic explosion. All organic materials are susceptible to this Scorpion's mana and prone to burst within his targets."

"And the mode of transfer is a toxin through the bloodstream," Ebony confirmed. For both of them, and perhaps many Emperors, destroying some flesh or bone wasn't fatal. The mana toxin that searched and waited inside important organs to explode was quite a threat.

Furthermore, the toxin can turn incorporeal and transfer through the spirit. Ebony had a hard time tracing them through his mana chassis the first few times but he was getting the hang of it after his intestines burst for the third time,

Having edited Sequester hundreds of times, he finally managed to slip some past the man's perception. All the impact retention, and reflection were beginning to overwhelm the Spirit Possession Emperor's natural passive defences as well.

'Retaining the impact in my body before reflecting it in one go. The effect is not bad.'

Ebony was prepared for it, but the Spirit Possession Emperor was truly swapping out combinations of Spirits, lending him their powers on the fly. After so long, he'd actually not exhausted all of the man's abilities due to the vast number of Spirits he had under his employ. Better yet, the combinations he used were never less effective than the last.

Besides the 5 Core Beasts, Ebony determined that the man could combine up to 3 more spirits' abilities on top of that. Or, he was purposefully holding back to catch Ebony off guard.

He also confirmed that it was the Falcon that binds all of them together.

Yet he hasn't found a way to target specific spirits within the user or just the spirit as a whole. The Will consumption to connect a single strike to the spirit body would be sky high until he knew what he was doing, but at least he could hurt them. That means it was doable with his current Will. It was less Will-intensive for a spell to harm a spirit than to touch it physically.

Mana alone should be able to hurt spirits. It was just his opponent's spirits that were high-level and capable enough to avoid such damage compared to their lesser evolved counterparts.

Other than a seemingly limitless supply of energy conversion, the Spirit-Qi Whale was likely the largest supplier of pure power, be it physical or mental. It heightened all the other Core Beasts' power.

5 Core skills that are in the form of beasts that work so well together are harder to get around than he imagined.